Photo: Courtesy of the artist
I first saw Armin van Buuren live in 2015, when he brought his A State of Trance world tour to Mumbai for the first time. A decade later, I witnessed the Dutch trance pioneer unveil his audiovisual experience The Orb at Tomorrowland this year, and the shift in energy was palpable. While his earlier shows were tightly engineered productions of frenetic synths, rolling basslines, smoke, and lasers, his sound now felt darker and more complex. Yet, the showmanship and scale that have always defined van Buuren stayed the same. As a glowing sphere floated above the stage and he dropped his track “Heavy” with the force of artillery fire, it almost felt like a statement: he wasn’t here to reminisce, but to keep pushing the envelope of what an Armin van Buuren experience can look, feel, and sound like.
Now, he’s blowing up that boundary even more with Piano, an all-acoustic album which sees the electronic music icon step into the role of a classical musician on record for the first time. A collection of 15 self-composed and self-produced tracks featuring both piano and strings, van Buuren charts new sonic terrains alongside his piano instructor, Geronimo Snijtsheuvel. Released on Oct. 31, 2025, the album brims with van Buuren’s signature cinematic sweep but distills it into its most pared-back form. Recorded in seven one-take sessions at the ConcertLab studio in Utrecht, Piano finds van Buuren at his most curious and unguarded, whether he’s messing around with mic’d drones on “Clouded Window,” tapping into his proclivity for anthems on “Sonic Samba,” or drifting into waltz rhythms with ¾ time signatures on “Soaring Kite” and “Ballerina.”
“Lately I’ve been finding myself playing with things like ¾ time signatures or progressions that don’t really fit into the world of dance music,” van Buuren tells Rolling Stone India, explaining how working on the acoustic record helped him unlock new layers to his decades-long sound. “Piano gave me the space to explore those ideas and let them be heard in their pure form, without having to adapt them to the club.”
Van Buuren’s renewed fascination with the classical form began five years ago, when he started taking piano lessons during a particularly emotionally draining period. Working closely with Snijtsheuvel, a classical, jazz, and conservatory musician, van Buuren used his composition classes as a launchpad for fresh ideas, a much-needed creative reset that would eventually lead him to Piano. But it’s a sound that’s always been anchored in his DNA. His father, Joep van Buuren, was himself a pianist and first sparked his love for the instrument, laying the foundation for his melodic sensibility. “I’ve always started writing my songs at the piano, so in a way this record feels like coming full circle,” he says. In fact, returning to the piano medium has also trickled into his creative process as an electronic artist. “Understanding harmony and movement on a deeper level gives me more freedom when I’m producing,” he says. “I can build tracks that feel more intentional, because I know exactly what emotion each chord or transition can create. It’s made me so much more aware of what I’m actually doing in the studio.”
That sense of intention seems to be what’s carried van Buuren through his most creatively charged year yet. And as the electronic music trailblazer continues to venture into new sonic universes, it’s clear he’s pursuing something far deeper than pure propulsion.
Reflecting on the importance of evolution and risk-taking, he firmly believes the need for carefully labelled and clustered genres is now becoming increasingly obsolete. “More recently, [even genres like] trance and techno have been fusing more and more often,” he points out. “That would have never happened in the early 2000s. Back then, genres were much more walled off, and stepping beyond those zones was seen as incredibly risky. But the past decade has shown that people have opened their minds.” He likens this revelation to the way forward for his trance music persona as well, emphasising that rather than revolving around a bpm or fixed sound elements, A State of Trance continues to celebrate trance without being confined by old-fashioned standards.
Another surprising move this year was his cross-cultural collaboration on “Ishq Hai (This Is Love),” with composer Anurag Saikia and U.K. R&B mainstay Craig David, which bridged trance, R&B, and Indian classical melodies into one heady collaboration. “What really surprised me was how naturally those different worlds could come together once we stopped thinking in terms of genres,” he says. “Indian classical music has such a deep emotional core. It’s about expression and spirituality, which is something trance has always shared. Working with Anurag and Craig opened me up to new rhythmic patterns and melodic phrasing I might not have explored otherwise. It reminded me that music truly is a universal language: you just have to listen and let it guide you.”
India, he adds, has long held a special place in the global electronic music story. “While it took a little longer for mainstream electronic music to gain a foothold in India, people often forget that Goa Trance is part of its heritage,” he says, referring to the electronic music movement born on the beaches of Anjuna and Vagator in the late Eighties, a mixture of acid house, psychedelic rock, and spiritual motifs, that birthed psy trance and cemented India’s place in dance music history. “That legacy has built such a strong foundation for where the scene is headed now,” he adds. “You can see it in the crowd — they’re passionate, curious, and eager to embrace new sounds. I can’t wait to see how it develops next.”
Having witnessed the evolution of electronic music from the days of vinyl to the streaming era, van Buuren remains optimistic about where the genre is heading. “I’ve seen formats change, genres rise and fall, and trends come and go,” he says. “But dance music has always been tied to technology and innovation; that’s what keeps it alive. Expect a fast-paced scene that can change in the blink of an eye. And I, for one, love that.”
Still, not everything needs to evolve. For van Buuren, one thing has stayed constant: his refusal to chase trends. “The moment you start creating just to fit in, you lose your connection to who you are,” he says. “Melody, emotion, and energy—that’s the core of what I do and what I love. I’ll always evolve, but I’ll never force myself into a sound just because it’s popular.”
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